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This is the game you will never find on Google. Because the name of the game is The Game, and that’s just not very distinctive. The Game is a cooperative card game that was nominated for the 2015 Spiel des Jahres. It’s small and abstract, but that doesn’t say anything about how much fun it is.

Sanssouci, a palace in Potsdam near Berlin, Germany. It’s famous for it’s beautiful gardens, and those gardens are what Michael Kiesling wants you to recreate in the game named Sanssouci. But it’s not about their beauty, their symmetry or even their completion. All you care for is: how far down the garden paths can someone walk?

There once was an onmyo master, a teller of fortune and summoner of spirits. This onmyo master had two children, both thinking only they deserve to inherit his title. And so the two children fight, with the spirits they summon, over who is the greater summoner and thus deserving of the title. That’s the short story behind the Onitama, an abstract game that barely takes longer than telling its story.

In an age of boardgames made of cardboard, some games stand out for their material. But a real wood cube as game “board” is not the only thing Master Thieves has to offer: you will also find a good amount of strategy and the greatest challenge to your memory and sense of direction I know about in any recent game.

Fog still lies over the Loch, the early morning was silent a minute ago. Now, the silence is disturbed by a stampede of photographers, running around the lake, setting up their cameras. Because, once more, Nessie has been spotted, and all the papers want the best photos.

We find ourselves in a not-so-far future. The whole world is controlled by a totalitarian government. Only a small resistance group is desperately trying to free the people, but their time is running out: they have already been infiltrated.

Kingsburg is a medieval dice-fest about building up your shire (no, not The Shire, but you can always add a bit of roleplay if you want) and defeating demons and dragons that attack each winter, all through bribery at the court. It seems the ends do justify the means here.